He spoke in a careless, matter-of-fact manner, and as he talked he was leading the way up the short beach, toward the northernmost edge of the mangrove swamp.  Claire could not well take further offence at a service which apparently had been rendered to her out of the merest common politeness.  So, after another icy look at his unconscious back, she followed wordlessly in Brice’s wake.

Now that he was on dry land again and on his way to the house where, at the very least, a stormy scene might be expected, the man’s spirits seemed to rise, almost boyishly.  The blood was running again through his veins.  The cool night air was drying his soaked clothes.  The prospect of possible adventure stirred him.

Blithely he sought the shoreward entrance to the hidden path, by the mental notes he had made of its exact whereabouts when Bobby Burns had happened upon its secret.  And, in another half-minute he had drawn aside the screen of growing boughs and was standing aside for Claire to enter the path.

“You see,” he explained, impersonally, “this path is a very nice little mystery.  But, like most mysteries, it is quite simple, when once you know your way in and out of it.  I knew where it was when I was a kid, but I couldn’t remember the spot where it came out here.  Back yonder, a bit to northward, I came upon Roke, yesterday.  I gather he had been visiting your house or Hade’s, by way of the hidden path, and was on his way back to his boat, to return to Roustabout Key, when he happened upon Bobby Burns—­and then on me.  He must have wondered where I vanished to.  For he couldn’t have seen me enter the path.  Maybe he mentioned that to Hade, too, this afternoon.  If Hade thought I knew the path, he’d think I knew a good deal more ....  By the way,” he added, to the ostentatiously unlistening Claire, “that’s the second time you’ve stumbled.  And both times, you were too far ahead for me to catch you.  This is the best part of the path, too—­the straightest and the least dark part.  If we stumble here, we’ll tumble, farther on, unless you use that flashlight of yours.  May I trouble you to—?”

“I forgot,” she said stiffly, as she drew the torch from her pocket and pressed its button.

The dense black of the swamp was split by the light’s white sword, and softer beams from its sharp radiance illumined the pitch-dark gloom for a few yards to either side of the tortuous path.  The shadows of the man and the woman were cast in monstrous grotesquely floating shapes behind them as they moved forward.

“This is a cheery rambling-place,” commented Gavin.  “I wonder if you know its history?  I mean, of course, before Standish had it recut and jacked up and bridged, and all that?  This path dates back to the house’s first owners—­in the Seminole days I was telling you about.  They made it as a quick getaway, to the water, in case a war-party of Seminoles should drop in on them from